Iranian proxy attacks US ship and Obama does nothing in response?

Max Boot:

On Sunday night, as Americans were transfixed by the spectacle of the second presidential debate, events occurred off the coast of Yemen that remind us of the kind of challenges with which a president must contend. Two ballistic missiles were fired at a U.S. destroyer in international waters from the part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, an Iranian-back militia. The missiles did not hit the USS Mason, although it’s unclear if they had some internal defect or whether the ship defended itself with its suite of missile-defense systems.

U.S. warships do not routinely come under attack. When they do, it’s called an act of war. So someone has committed an act of war against the United States. The proximate culprit appears to be the Houthi movement, which is mad at America for backing an assault on it by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Just last week, an Emirati ship was destroyed off the same part of the Yemen coast. But the Houthis are hardly lone actors. They do not manufacture their own missiles. They get them from Iran. That suggests this could be seen as an act of war by Iran against the United States.

It is an incident that is far more serious than the way it is being treated. It is, in fact, almost entirely overshadowed by the furor over the Trump campaign. The Obama administration should not be allowed to ignore it–if that is, in fact, its intent.

“A senior Obama administration official” told the Washington Post: “Our first priority is the safety and security of Americans overseas, and we will take all appropriate actions to protect our men and women in uniform in the region.”

But what action? The administration will want to do as little as possible for fear of alienating Iran and thus scuttling the nuclear deal. This is what those of us who opposed the deal predicted–that it would become a cover for Iranian aggression that the U.S. could not stop because the mullahs could always blackmail us with threats of restarting their nuclear program. But if the U.S. continues to ignore Iranian aggression, the result will be to plunge the region deeper into conflict and empower extremists of both Shiite and Sunni persuasion.
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Obama has let Iran run wild since he made his bad deal with them and he is unlikely to do anything and they know.  That is probably the reason they gave the go ahead to the Houthis to attack the US ship.   Obama is determined to ignore all provocations , probably because it would be an admission of what a bad deal he has made.

This story indicates the Mason fired missiles toward the incoming cruise missiles, but it is not clear whether they were shot down or fell in the water on their own.  But that still does not answer the question of why those responsible for the attack were not fired upon.